Monthly Archives: January 2011

I hadn’t intended to say anything more about President Obama’s State of the Union speech, but this excellent post by the Blogprof reminded me of one of Obama’s most offensive pronouncements: If we truly care about our deficit, we simply cannot afford a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. Those greedy “wealthiest 2 percent” must be fleecing the rest of us, right? Well, »

Federal district court judge Roger Vinson issued his ruling today on summary judgment motions in the Florida case, State of Florida v. United States Department of Health and Human Services, in which 26 states allege that Obamacare is unconstitutional. Judge Vinson agreed with their arguments and granted summary judgment in favor of plaintiffs. Judge Vinson’s ruling evens the score at 2-2; two federal courts have upheld the act against constitutional »

If the Mubarak government collapses, the Muslim Brotherhood is the organization most likely to fill the vacuum. Haaretz reports: “Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood eyes unity gov’t without Mubarak.” Gamal Nasser, a spokesman for the Brotherhood, told DPA that his group was in talks with Mohammed El Baradei – the former UN nuclear watchdog chief – to form a national unity government without the National Democratic Party of Mubarak. … Speaking to »

Anne Applebaum is the author of Gulag: A History and one very smart cookie, but this is stupid: “We should smile and embrace instability. And we should rejoice–because change, in repressive societies, is good.” The counterexamples spring to mind. Applebaum brings us the wisdom of Jimmy Carter and Andrew Young circa 1979. Thirty years later, should we really have to ask whether change was “good,” or even for the better, »

The report of the Commission on Civil Rights on the New Black Panther Party case is out. John took a look at the report in this post. Jennifer Rubin took a look at the report this post. So far as I can tell via Google News, the report has generated no coverage among the mainstream media. Yet attention should be paid. It’s styled an “interim report,” but it is likely »

Bill Katz is the proprietor of Urgent Agenda and our occasional contributor. Bill draws on his experience as a talent coordinator at The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson to recall David Frye: David Frye is dead. Make no mistake about that. Indeed, those very words – “Make no mistake about that” – were key to making Frye the best, and most influential political impressionist of the late 1960s and early »

In this post, I described Obamacare as a uniquely vicious form of corruption. Harsh words? Definitely, but I think justified: [T]he vicious strategy at the heart of Obamacare [is to] pass terrible legislation, and then collect a toll by exempting your friends–those who pay you lots of money–from that legislation, while your enemies have to live with it. Dr. Milton Wolf expands on this idea in the Washington Times: If »

Egypt is conventionally described as our biggest ally in the Arab world. We give Egypt over $1 billion in aid annually, much of it military. Have you ever wondered why? Claire Berlinski writes: Two days ago a friend said to me, “I’ve never understood why we give Egypt so much military aid.” I’ve actually been waiting patiently since 1993 for someone to say that to me. I wrote my doctoral »

As you probably know, Paul Mirengoff has taken a leave from blogging and has, for now anyway, resigned from the Power Line masthead. We’ve decided to fill the hole left by Paul’s departure by recruiting a series of guest posters. The idea is that we will have one or two like-minded writers posting, along with Scott and me, for periods loosely expected to be a few weeks to, perhaps, a »

It’s a huge honor and thrill to be invited to join the ranks of the original Pajamahadeen at Power Line, and I’ll try hard to live up to the standard Paul Mirengoff and the rest of the troika have set. It’s a tough assignment: John already has the beauty pageant beat, and Scott the music and culture beat. Paul was Power Line’s incomparable sports correspondent, and while I’ll try to »

It is widely being reported that, based on surface-temperature data from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 2010 was tied for the warmest year on record. What is not so widely reported is that those surface temperature data have been so shamelessly manipulated by climate alarmists that they are entirely unreliable. For a short course in one of the great scientific »

Tort law includes the eggshell skull rule under which a party whose negligence harms another is responsible for the direct consequences of his acts, even in the case of one who was unusually prone to injury. In other words, you take your victim as you find him. Reading Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s account of the settlement of his lawsuit against the operators and suppliers of the House cafeteria — Kucinich sent »

You may never have heard of the Boston-based sixties group Orpheus, but you may nevertheless recall its one hit — it only reached number 80 nationally, though it went to number one in some local markets — “Can’t Find the Time.” Written by singer Bruce Arnold, the song is representative of Arnold’s recordings with producer Alan Lorber. The song has been covered by a few other artists, most notably Hootie »

Sometimes you get the feeling that liberal pundits are all going around the bend together, in a grand carnival of craziness. Take Chris Matthews, who began his report on the riots in Egypt with this rant: Here is the transcript, for those who just can’t stand to watch Matthews: Good evening. I`m Chris Matthews in Washington. Leading off tonight: Unrest in Egypt. Proving the Iraq war wasn`t needed, these protests »

Barry Rubin has filed a special report on “The revolt in Egypt and U.S. policy.” It begins: There is no good policy for the United States regarding the uprising in Egypt but the Obama Administration may be adopting something close to the worst option. This is its first real international crisis. And it seems to be adopting a policy that, while somewhat balanced, is pushing the Egyptian regime out of »

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in the 1920s and is the source of pretty much every extremist Muslim group, including Hamas. The Muslim Brotherhood continues to be active in Egypt and is the most obvious alternative to the Army/Mubarak regime should that regime fall. Stratfor, citing a source inside Hamas, says members of that organization may be slipping into Egypt to aid the Brotherhood: The Egyptian police are »